On January 21, 2010, a new patent was approved in the United States for a new type of dye sensitized solar cell and module that aims at improving performance, enhance short circuit current and reduce costs. This patent was filed by Ryohsuke Yamanaka, Nobuhiro Fuke and Atsushi Fukui on December 12, 2006.
Prior to filing for their patent, Yamanaka, Fuke and Fukui looked into the reasons why Dye Sensitized Solar Cells were inefficient. They were able to conclude that all of of the current solar cells consumed a lot of energy during their drawn out processes while not giving enough output, and were not able to be created on a larger scale. They also noticed that their heavy weight restricted its usage. Their new patent focuses on fixing all of these problems.
Yamanaka et. al were able to pinpoint where the flaws in the current DSSC's were. In dealing with large scale replication, a solar cell that is created with a surface area as large as 1 m would highly reduce in efficiency due to an increase in solar resistance. This, in turn, reduces the fill factor and the short circuit current conversion. In order to counter this, the new patent proposes to have multiple DSSC's that can be connected into a series. Secondly, DSSC's were believed to be made in a very costly manner by utilizing a large amount of varying and expensive components, thereby having an intricate process in which to manufacture the cells. Yamanaka et. al were able to fix this problem by using by using less materials, such as thinner photoelectric conversion layers, as well as better manufacturing processes, such as firing furnaces, and therefore, use less energy to combine these materials.
In doing this, the combined efforts of Yamanaka, Fuke and Fukui were able to create a new patent for a more cost effective and efficient dye sensitized solar cell. Although no official statistics have been claimed yet, we look forward to seeing how much of an improvement these changes can actually create.
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